The Origins of Addiction:

Evidence from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study

Vincent J. Felitti, MD







Department of Preventive Medicine
Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program
7060 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard
San Diego, California 92111
USA













English version of the article published in Germany as:
Felitti VJ . Ursprnge des Suchtverhaltens Evidenzen aus einer Studie zu belastenden
Kindheitserfahrungen. Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 2003;
52:547-559.


02/16/2004 page 1 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE



The Origins of Addiction:
Evidence from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study


In my beginning is my end.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
1


ABSTRACT:
A population-based analysis of over 17,000 middle-class American adults
undergoing comprehensive, biopsychosocial medical evaluation indicates that three
common categories of addiction are strongly related in a proportionate manner to several
specific categories of adverse experiences during childhood. This, coupled with related
information, suggests that the basic cause of addiction is predominantly experience-
dependent during childhood and not substance-dependent. This challenge to the usual
concept of the cause of addictions has significant implications for medical practice and
for treatment programs.


Purpose:
My intent is to challenge the usual concept of addiction with new evidence from a
population-based clinical study of over 17,000 adult, middle-class Americans. The usual
concept of addiction essentially states that the compulsive use of 'addictive' substances is
in some way caused by properties intrinsic to their molecular structure. This view
confuses mechanism with cause. Because any accepted explanation of addiction has
social, medical, therapeutic, and legal implications, the way one understands addiction is
important. Confusing mechanism with basic cause quickly leads one down a path that is
misleading. Here, new data is presented to stimulate rethinking the basis of addiction.


Background:
The information I present comes from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)
Study.
2
The ACE Study deals with the basic causes underlying the 10 most common
causes of death in America; addiction is only one of several outcomes studied.

In the mid-1980s, physicians in Kaiser Permanente's Department of Preventive
Medicine in San Diego discovered that patients successfully losing weight in the Weight
Program were the most likely to drop out. This unexpected observation led to our
discovery that overeating and obesity were often being used unconsciously as protective
solutions to unrecognized problems dating back to childhood.
3, 4
Counterintuitively,
obesity provided hidden benefits: it often was sexually, physically, or emotionally
protective.
02/16/2004 page 2 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
Our discovery that public health problems like obesity could also be personal
solutions, and our finding an unexpectedly high prevalence of adverse childhood
experiences in our middle class adult population, led to collaboration with the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) to document their prevalence and to study the implications of
these unexpected clinical observations. I am deeply indebted to my colleague, Robert F.
Anda MD, who skillfully designed the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study in
an epidemiologically sound manner, and whose group at CDC analyzed several hundred
thousand pages of patient data to produce the data we have published.

Many of our obese patients had previously been heavy drinkers, heavy smokers,
or users of illicit drugs. Of what relevance are these observations; do they imply some
unspecified innate tendency to addiction? Is addiction genetic, as some have proposed
for alcoholism? Is addiction a biomedical disease, a personality disorder, or something
different? Are diseases and personality disorders separable, or are they ultimately
related? What does one make of the dramatic recent findings in neurobiology that seem
to promise a neurochemical explanation for addiction? Why does only a small percent of
persons exposed to addictive substances become compulsive users?

Although the problem of narcotic addiction has led to extensive legislative
attempts at eradication, its prevalence has not abated over the past century. However, the
distribution pattern of narcotic use within the population has radically changed, attracting
significant political attention and governmental action.
5
The inability to control addiction
by these major, well-intended governmental efforts has drawn thoughtful and challenging
commentary from a number of different viewpoints.
6,7

In our detailed study of over 17,000 middle-class American adults of diverse
ethnicity, we found that the compulsive use of nicotine, alcohol, and injected street drugs
increases proportionally in a strong, graded, dose-response manner that closely parallels
the intensity of adverse life experiences during childhood. This of course supports old
psychoanalytic views and is at odds with current concepts, including those of biological
psychiatry, drug-treatment programs, and drug-eradication programs. Our findings are
disturbing to some because they imply that the basic causes of addiction lie within us and
the way we treat each other, not in drug dealers or dangerous chemicals. They suggest
that billions of dollars have been spent everywhere except where the answer is to be
found.

Study design:
Kaiser Permanente (KP) is the largest prepaid, non-profit, healthcare delivery
system in the United States; there are 500,000 KP members in San Diego, approximately
30% of the greater metropolitan population. We invited 26,000 consecutive adults
voluntarily seeking comprehensive medical evaluation in the Department of Preventive
Medicine to help us understand how events in childhood might later affect health status in
adult life. Seventy percent agreed, understanding the information obtained was
anonymous and would not become part of their medical records. Our cohort population
was 80% white including Hispanic, 10% black, and 10% Asian. Their average age was
57 years; 74% had been to college, 44% had graduated college; 49.5% were men. In any
four-year period, 81% of all adult Kaiser Health Plan members seek such medical
02/16/2004 page 3 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
evaluation; there is no reason to believe that selection bias is a significant factor in the
Study. The Study was carried out in two waves, to allow mid point correction if
necessary. Further details of Study design are described in our initial publication.
2


The ACE Study compares adverse childhood experiences against adult health
status, on average a half-century later. The experiences studied were eight categories of
adverse childhood experience commonly observed in the Weight Program. The
prevalence of each category is stated in parentheses. The categories are:
recurrent and severe physical abuse (11%)
recurrent and severe emotional abuse (11%)
contact sexual abuse (22%)
growing up in a household with:
an alcoholic or drug-user (25%)
a member being imprisoned (3%)
a mentally ill, chronically depressed, or institutionalized member (19%)
the mother being treated violently (12%)
both biological parents not being present (22%)

The scoring system is simple: exposure during childhood or adolescence to any
category of ACE was scored as one point. Multiple exposures within a category were not
scored: one alcoholic within a household counted the same as an alcoholic and a drug
user; if anything, this tends to understate our findings. The ACE Score therefore can
range from 0 to 8. Less than half of this middle-class population had an ACE Score of 0;
one in fourteen had an ACE Score of 4 or more.

In retrospect, an initial design flaw was not scoring subtle issues like low-level
neglect and lack of interest in a child who is otherwise the recipient of adequate physical
care. This omission will not affect the interpretation of our First Wave findings, and may
explain the presence of some unexpected outcomes in persons having ACE Score zero.
Emotional neglect was studied in the Second Wave.

The ACE Study contains a prospective arm: the starting cohort is being followed
forward in time to match adverse childhood experiences against current doctor office
visits, emergency department visits, pharmacy costs, hospitalizations, and death.
Publication of these analyses soon will begin.

Findings:
Our overall findings, presented extensively in the American literature,
demonstrate that:
Adverse childhood experiences are surprisingly common, although typically
concealed and unrecognized.
ACEs still have a profound effect 50 years later, although now transformed from
psychosocial experience into organic disease, social malfunction, and mental
illness.
Adverse childhood experiences are the main determinant of the health and social
well-being of the nation.
02/16/2004 page 4 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE

Our overall findings challenge conventional views, some of which are clearly
defensive. They also provide opportunities for new approaches to some of our most
difficult public health problems. Findings from the ACE Study provide insights into
changes that are needed in pediatrics and adult medicine, which expectedly will have a
significant impact on the cost and effectiveness of medical care.

Our intent here is to present our findings only as they relate to the problem of
addiction, using nicotine, alcohol, and injected illicit drugs as examples of substances that
are commonly viewed as addicting. If we know why things happen and how, then we
may have a new basis for prevention.

Smoking:
Smoking tobacco has come under heavy opposition in the United States,
particularly in southern California where the ACE Study was carried out. Whereas at one
time most men and many women smoked, only a minority does so now; it is illegal to
smoke in office buildings, public transportation, restaurants, bars, and in most areas of
hotels.

When we studied current smokers, we found that smoking had a strong, graded
relationship to adverse childhood experiences. Figure 1 illustrates this clearly. The p
value for this and all other data displays is .001 or better.

This stepwise 250% increase in the likelihood of an ACE Score 6 child being a
current smoker, compared to an ACE Score 0 child, is generally not known.
8
This simple
observation has profound implications that illustrate the psychoactive benefits of
nicotine
9
; this information has largely been lost in the public health onslaught against
smoking, but is important in understanding the intractable nature of smoking in many
people.
10, 11, 12, 13

ACE Score vs. Smoking
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
0 1 2 3 4-5 6 or mor
ACE Score
%

P
r
e
s
e
n
t
l
y

S
m
o
k
i
n
g
e

02/16/2004 page 5 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE

When we match the prevalence of adult chronic bronchitis and emphysema
against ACEs, we again see a strong dose-response relationship. We thereby proceed
from the relationship of adverse childhood experiences to a health-risk behavior to their
relationship with an organic disease. In other words, Figure 2 illustrates the conversion of
emotional stressors into an organic disease, through the intermediary mechanism of an
emotionally beneficial (although medically unsafe) behavior.
ACE Score vs. COPD
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
0 1 2 3 4 or more
ACE Score
%

w
i
t
h

C
O
P
D

Alcoholism:
Ones own alcoholism is not easily or comfortably acknowledged; therefore,
when we asked our Study cohort if they had ever considered themselves to be alcoholic,
we felt that Yes answers probably understated the truth, making the effect even stronger
than is shown. The relationship of self-acknowledged alcoholism to adverse childhood
experiences is depicted in Figure 3. Here we see that more than a 500% increase in adult
alcoholism is related in a strong, graded manner to adverse childhood experiences.
14

ACE Score vs. Adult Alcoholism
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
0 1 2 3 4 or more
ACE Score
%

A
l
c
o
h
o
l
i
c

02/16/2004 page 6 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
Injection of illegal drugs:
In the United States, the most commonly injected street drugs are heroin and
methamphetamine. Methamphetamine has the interesting property of being closely
related to amphetamine, the first anti-depressant introduced by Ciba Pharmaceuticals in
1932. When we studied the relation of injecting illicit drugs to adverse childhood
experiences, we again found a similar dose-response pattern; the likelihood of injection
of street drugs increases strongly and in a graded fashion as the ACE Score increases.
(Figure 4) At the extremes of ACE Score, the figures for injected drug use are even more
powerful. For instance, a male child with an ACE Score of 6, when compared to a male
child with an ACE Score of 0, has a 46-fold (4,600%) increase in the likelihood of
becoming an injection drug user sometime later in life.
ACE Score vs. Injected Drug Use
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
0 1 2 3 4 or more
ACE Score
%

H
a
v
e

I
n
j
e
c
t
e
d

D
r
u
g
s

Discussion:
Although awareness of the hazards of smoking is now near universal, and has caused a
significant reduction in smoking, in recent years the prevalence of smoking has remained
largely unchanged. In fact, the association between ACE Score and smoking is stronger
in age cohorts born after the Surgeon Generals Report on Smoking. Do current smokers
now represent a core of individuals who have a more profound need for the psychoactive
benefits of nicotine than those who have given up smoking? Our clinical experience
12
and data from the ACE Study suggest this as a likely possibility. Certainly, there is good
evidence of the psychoactive benefits of nicotine for moderating anger, anxiety, and
hunger.
9-12


Alcohol is well accepted as a psychoactive agent. This obvious explanation of
alcoholism is now sometimes rejected in favor of a proposed genetic causality. Certainly,
alcoholism may be familial, as is language spoken. Our findings support an experiential
and psychodynamic explanation for alcoholism, although this may well be moderated by
genetic and metabolic differences between races and individuals.

Analysis of our Study data for injected drug use shows a powerful relation to ACEs.
Population Attributable Risk* (PAR) analysis shows that 78% of drug injection by
02/16/2004 page 7 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
women can be attributed to adverse childhood experiences. For men and women
combined, the PAR is 67%. Moreover, this PAR has been constant in four age cohorts
whose birth dates span a century; this indicates that the relation of adverse childhood
experiences to illicit drug use has been constant in spite of major changes in drug
availability and in social customs, and in the introduction of drug eradication programs.
17


American soldiers in Vietnam provided an important although overlooked
observation. Many enlisted men in Vietnam regularly used heroin. However, only 5% of
those considered addicted were still using it 10 months after their return to the US.
15, 16

Treatment did not account for this high recovery rate. Why does not everyone become
addicted when they repeatedly inject a substance reputedly as addicting as heroin? If a
substance like heroin is not inherently addicting to everyone, but only to a small minority
of human users, what determines this selectivity? Is it the substance that is intrinsically
addicting, or do life experiences actually determine its compulsive use? Surely its
chemical structure remains constant. Our findings indicate that the major factor
underlying addiction is adverse childhood experiences that have not healed with time and
that are overwhelmingly concealed from awareness by shame, secrecy, and social taboo.
The compulsive user appears to be one who, not having other resolutions available,
unconsciously seeks relief by using materials with known psychoactive benefit, accepting
the known long-term risk of injecting illicit, impure chemicals. The ACE Study provides
population-based clinical evidence that unrecognized adverse childhood experiences are a
major, if not the major, determinant of who turns to psychoactive materials and becomes
addicted.

Given that the conventional concept of addiction is seriously flawed, and that we
have presented strong evidence for an alternative explanation, we propose giving up our
old mechanistic explanation of addiction in favor of one that explains it in terms of its
psychodynamics: unconscious although understandable decisions being made to seek
chemical relief from the ongoing effects of old trauma, often at the cost of accepting
future health risk. Expressions like self-destructive behavior are misleading and should
be dropped because, while describing the acceptance of long-term risk, they overlook the
importance of the obvious short-term benefits that drive the use of these substances.

This revised concept of addiction suggests new approaches to primary prevention
and treatment. The current public health approach of repeated cautionary warnings has
demonstrated its limitations, perhaps because the cautions do not respect the individual
when they exhort change without understanding. Adverse childhood experiences are
widespread and typically unrecognized. These experiences produce neurodevelopmental
and emotional damage, and impair social and school performance. By adolescence,
children have a sufficient skill and independence to seek relief through a small number of
mechanisms, many of which have been in use since biblical times: drinking alcohol,
sexual promiscuity, smoking tobacco, using psychoactive materials, and overeating.
These coping devices are manifestly effective for their users, presumably through their
ability to modulate the activity of various neurotransmitters. Nicotine, for instance, is a

* Population Attributable Risk is a simple concept, although a complex calculation, that describes
in a population that portion of a risk factor that can be attributed to a particular cause.
02/16/2004 page 8 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE

powerful substitute for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Not surprisingly, the level of
some neurotransmitters varies genetically between individuals
18
.

It is these coping devices, with their short-term emotional benefits, that often pose
long-term risks leading to chronic disease; many lead to premature death. This sequence
is depicted in the ACE Pyramid (Figure 5). The sequence is slow, often unstoppable, and
is generally obscured by time, secrecy, and social taboo. Time does not heal in most of
these instances. Because cause and effect usually lie within a family, it is understandably
more comforting to demonize a chemical than to look within. We find that addiction
overwhelmingly implies prior adverse life experiences.

The sequence in the ACE Pyramid supports psychoanalytic observations that
addiction is primarily a consequence of adverse childhood experiences. Moreover, it
does so by a population-based study, thereby escaping the potential selection bias of
individual case reports. Addiction is not a brain disease, nor is it caused by chemical
imbalance or genetics. Addiction is best viewed as an understandable, unconscious,
compulsive use of psychoactive materials in response to abnormal prior life experiences,
most of which are concealed by shame, secrecy, and social taboo.












Death
Birth
Adverse Childhood Experiences
Social, Emotional, &
Cognitive Impairment
Adoption of
Health-risk Behaviors
Disease, Disability
Early
The Influence of Adverse The Influence of Adverse
Childhood Experiences Throughout Life Childhood Experiences Throughout Life
Death









Our findings show that childhood experiences profoundly and causally shape
adult life. Chemical imbalances, whether genetically modulated or not, are the
necessary intermediary mechanisms by which these causal life experiences are translated
into manifest effect. It is important to distinguish between cause and mechanism.
Uncertainty and confusion between the two will lead to needless polemics and
misdirected efforts for preventing or treating addiction, whether on a social or an
02/16/2004 page 9 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
individual scale. Our findings also make it clear that studying any one category of
adverse experience, be it domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, or other forms of
family dysfunction is a conceptual error. None occur in vacuuo; they are part of a
complex systems failure: one does not grow up with an alcoholic where everything else
in the household is fine.

Treatment:
If we are to improve the current unhappy situation, we must in medical settings
routinely screen at the earliest possible point for adverse childhood experiences. It is
feasible and acceptable to carry out mass screening for ACEs in the context of
comprehensive medical evaluation. This identifies cases early and allows treatment of
basic causes rather than vainly treating the symptom of the moment. We have screened
over 450,000 adult members of Kaiser Health Plan for these eight categories of adverse
childhood experiences. Our initial screening is by an expanded Review of Systems
questionnaire; patients certainly do not spontaneously volunteer this information. Yes
answers then are pursued with conventional history taking: I see that you were molested
as a child. Tell me how that has affected you later in your life.

Such screening has demonstrable value. Before we screened for adverse
childhood experiences, our standardized comprehensive medical evaluation led to a 12%
reduction in medical visits during the subsequent year. Later, in a pilot study, an on-site
psychoanalyst conducted a one-time interview of depressed patients; this produced a 50%
reduction in the utilization of this subset during the subsequent year. However, the
reduction occurred only in those depressed patients who were high utilizers of medical
care because of somatization disorders. Recently, we evaluated our current approach by
a neural net analysis of the records of 135,000 patients who were screened for adverse
childhood experiences as part of our redesigned comprehensive medical evaluation. This
entire cohort showed an overall reduction of 35% in doctor office visits during the year
subsequent to evaluation.
19


Our experience asking these questions indicates that the magnitude of the ACE
problem is so great that primary prevention is ultimately the only realistic solution.
Primary prevention requires the development of a beneficial and acceptable intrusion into
the closed realm of personal and family experience. Techniques for accomplishing such
change en masse are yet to be developed because each of us, fearing the new and
unknown as a potential crisis in self-esteem, often adjusts to the status quo. However,
one possible approach to primary prevention lies in the mass media: the story lines of
movies and television serials present a major therapeutic opportunity, unexploited thus
far, for contrasting desirable and undesirable parenting skills in various life situations.

Because addiction is experience-dependent and not substance-dependent, and
because compulsive use of only one substance is actually uncommon, one also might
restructure treatment programs to deal with underlying causes rather than to focus on
substance withdrawal. We have begun using this approach with benefit in our Obesity
Program, and plan to do so with some of the more conventionally accepted addictions.

02/16/2004 page 10 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
Conclusion:
The current concept of addiction is ill founded. Our study of the relationship of
adverse childhood experiences to adult health status in over 17,000 persons shows
addiction to be a readily understandable although largely unconscious attempt to gain
relief from well-concealed prior life traumas by using psychoactive materials. Because it
is difficult to get enough of something that doesnt quite work, the attempt is ultimately
unsuccessful, apart from its risks. What we have shown will not surprise most
psychoanalysts, although the magnitude of our observations in new, and our conclusions
are sometimes vigorously challenged by other disciplines.

The evidence supporting our conclusions about the basic cause of addiction is
powerful and its implications are daunting. The prevalence of adverse childhood
experiences and their long-term effects are clearly a major determinant of the health and
social well being of the nation. This is true whether looked at from the standpoint of
social costs, the economics of health care, the quality of human existence, the focus of
medical treatment, or the effects of public policy. Adverse childhood experiences are
difficult issues, made more so because they strike close to home for many of us. Taking
them on will create an ordeal of change, but will also provide for many the opportunity to
have a better life.


















Footnote:
Abstracts of all past and future ACE Study articles may be found by searching under the
author name (Felitti VJ) at the web site for the US National Library of Medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

Free subscription is available to an electronic newsletter dealing with various aspects of
the ACE Study. Contact: editor@acestudy.org
02/16/2004 page 11 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE

References:


1. Eliot, TS. Four Quartets. Harcourt, Brace, and World, New York, 1943.

2. Felitti VJ , Anda RF, Nordenberg D, Williamson DF, Spitz AM, Edwards V, Koss
MP, et al. The relationship of adult health status to childhood abuse and
household dysfunction. American J ournal of Preventive Medicine. 1998; 14:245-
258.

3. Felitti VJ . Long Term Medical Consequences of Incest, Rape, and Molestation.
Southern Medical J ournal. 1991; 84:328-331.

4. Felitti VJ . Childhood Sexual Abuse, Depression, and Family Dysfunction in
Adult Obese Patients. Southern Medical J ournal. 1993; 86:732-736.

5. Brecher EM. Licit and Illicit Drugs. Little Brown, Boston; 1972, p183-192

6. Friedman M, Szasz TS. On Liberty and Drugs: Essays on the free market and
prohibition. Drug Policy Foundation Press, Washington DC, 1992.

7. Gray J P. Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A
J udicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. Temple University Press, Philadelphia,
2001.

8. Anda RF, Croft J B, Felitti VJ , Nordenberg D, Giles WH, Williamson DF, Giovino
GA. Adverse childhood experiences and smoking during adolescence and
adulthood. J ournal of the American Medical Association. 1999; 282:1652-1658.

9. Carmody TP. Affect regulation, nicotine addiction, and smoking cessation. J
Psychoactive Drugs 1989; 24:111-122.

10. Larson PS, Silvette H. Tobacco: Experimental and Clinical Studies, Suppl. 3;
Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore, 1975.

11. J affe J H, J arvik M. In Lipton MA, DiMascio A, Killam K. Psychopharmacology:
A Generation of Progress. Raven Press, NY, 1978. p1665-1676.

12. ACE Score 6: Psychoactive benefits of nicotine. Videotaped interview.
Department of Preventive Medicine, Kaiser Permanente, San Diego, 1997.

13. Anda RF, Williamson DF, Escobedo LG, Mast EE, Giovino GA, Remingtom
PL. Depression and the dynamics of smoking. A national perspective.
J AMA. 1990 Sep 26;264(12):1541-5.

02/16/2004 page 12 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE
14. Dube SR, Anda RF, Felitti VJ , Edwards VJ , Croft J B. Adverse Childhood
Experiences and personal alcohol abuse as an adult. Addictive Behaviors. 2002;
27(5): 713-725.

15. Robins LN, Helzer J E, Davis DH. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1975 Aug;32(8):955-
61 Narcotic use in southeast Asia and afterward. An interview study of 898
Vietnam returnees.

16. Robins LN. Vietnam Veterans rapid recovery from heroin addiction: a fluke or
normal expectation? Addiction 1993; 88:1041-1054.

17. Dube SR, Felitti VJ , Dong M, Chapman DP, Giles WH, and Anda RF.
Childhood Abuse, Neglect, and Household Dysfunction and the Risk of Illicit
Drug Use: The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. Pediatrics. 2003; 111(3):
564-572.

18. Du L, Faludi G, Palkovits M, Sotoni P, et al. High activity-related allele of
MAO-A gene associated with depressed suicide in males. Neuroreport 2002;
13(9): 1195-98.

19. Felitti VJ . Unpublished data, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, San
Diego, 1978, 1980, 1998.




END


02/16/2004 page 13 Felitti ACE-Addiction article, DE